April 24th, 2012
NewsRescue– In a story fast gaining traction on Nigeria media outlets, the central bank governor of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido has been sued for alleged plagiarism of a certain US based professor, Victor E. Dike.
Culled from PM news, the prime source of this story:
The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has been dragged before a Federal High Court siting in Abuja over an alleged plagiarism by a Nigerian and United States of America-based academic, Prof Victor E. Dike.
According to PM news, Professor Dike allegedly asked the court to declare that Sanusi plagiarized his works and breached his copy right, and also asked the court to issue a perpetual injunction restraining Sanusi from citing his papers as his (Sanusi’s).
The story has since been republished without fact checking by Saharareporters, AllAfrica and other Nigerian news and media sources.
NewsRescue fact checks alleged plagiarism to keep our readers informed
There are quite a few problems with this purported legal case:
1. Quote belongs to Hoff, not Dike
The quote in the story as posted by PM news does not belong to Prof Dike. The news source reports that Dike accuses Prof Sanusi Lamido of plagiarizing verbatim the following quote:
“The challenges facing the economy is ineffective institutions and dilapidated infrastructure (bad roads, erratic power supply, limited access to potable water and basic healthcare, and ineffective regulatory agencies, etc). The plethora of reforms and policies are ineffective due to institutional failure (Hoff, 2003)”.
The problem with this is, Prof Dike is not Erika Hoff. Therefore if the quote as above referenced is Prof Dike’s reference to plagiarism, then either Prof. Dike is having an identity disorder, assuming himself to be Prof Erika Hoff, or Prof. Dike is representing Prof Erika Hoff.
2. Grammatical errors in quote, ridicule author and would be rather surprising if indeed used by the eloquent Sanusi
The quote in question has embarrassing grammatical errors. It will be very surprising that Prof. Sanusi Lamido or any other base intellectual quotes the above and uses it unedited. The quote goes:
“The challenges facing the economy is ineffective institutions and dilapidated infrastructure..”
That should read something like: “The challenges facing the economy are…, or are: …” Better yet, this should read: “The main challenges facing the economy are…”
Checking the next sentence, we read:
“…limited access to potable water and basic healthcare, and ineffective regulatory agencies, etc.”
An “and“ is clearly misused.
It can be easily concluded from the poverty of construction that for Professor Sanusi Lamido to use verbatim this poor constructed, grammatically dilapidated quote in his speech will be most surprising and unusual. Hence NewsRescue went ahead to check the alleged plagiarized speech of Prof. Sanusi Lamido to search for this referenced material of Erika Hoff presented by Dike.
3. Quote text not found in Sanusi’s speech
Our readers can click here to read Sanusi’s full lecture given at the Eight Convocation Ceremony of Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo state on 26 November, 2010 available on bis.org
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi: Growth prospects for the Nigerian economy {Click link for Pdf}
We searched for ‘plethora’, and found ‘0’ instances. We next searched for ‘dilapidated’ and found 2 instances, both as can be seen in image below were not Dike/Hoff’s phrases.
Related: NewsRescue– OnlineNigeria posts propaganda 2008 Somalia beheading video as Boko
It is pathetic that such a story can gain such attention on our media without any one deciding to check the facts to purify the content they offer their readers. We at NewsRescue continue to do our bidding to give our readers only fact checked sensible information.
